Security issue - or not? (remote trigger SMC startup)

Question

Hi,
During installation of a few zones on a Sol10U2 system today, I noticed that simply running an nmap scan on a freshly installed and booted zone would cause the SMC to start:
Starting Solaris Management Console server version 2.1.0.
endpoint created: :898
Adding instance of solaris_providerpath
Adding class Solaris_LocalFileSystem
Adding class Solaris_Directory
Adding class Solaris_Mount
Adding class Solaris_UFS
Adding class Solaris_HSFS
Adding class Solaris_UFSMount
Adding class Solaris_HSFSMount
Adding class Solaris_LocalFSResidesOnExtent
Compilation succeeded.
Adding class Solaris_DiskDrive
Adding class Solaris_DiskPartition
Adding class Solaris_MediaPresent
Adding class Solaris_LogicalDisk
Adding class Solaris_PhysicalMedia
Adding class Solaris_Disk
Adding class Solaris_PhysicalPackage
Adding class Solaris_RealizesExtent
Adding class Solaris_RealizesDiskPartition
Adding class Solaris_RealizesDiskDrive
Adding class Solaris_DiskPartitionBasedOnDisk
Adding class Solaris_DiskPartitionBasedOnFDisk
Adding class Solaris_SCSIController
Adding class Solaris_IDEController
Adding class Solaris_MPXIOController
Adding class Solaris_USBSCSIController
Adding class Solaris_GenericController
Adding class Solaris_SCSIInterface
Adding class Solaris_MPXIOInterface
Adding class Solaris_IDEInterface
Adding class Solaris_ExtraCapacityGroup
Adding class Solaris_MPXIOGroup
Adding class Solaris_ControllerLogicalIdentity
Adding class Solaris_MPXIOCtrlrLogicalIdentity
Adding class Solaris_ControllerComponent
Adding class Solaris_MPXIOComponent
Adding class Solaris_StorageLibrary
Compilation succeeded.
Adding class CIM_ManagedElement
Adding class CIM_SettingData
Adding class CIM_Share
Adding class CIM_FileShare
Adding class CIM_NFSShare
Adding class CIM_SharedElement
Adding class CIM_HostedShare
Compilation succeeded.
Adding class Solaris_NFSShare
Adding class Solaris_NFSShareSecurity
Adding class Solaris_NFS
Adding class Solaris_PersistentShare
Adding class Solaris_MountSetting
Adding class Solaris_NFSMountSetting
Adding class Solaris_ShareSetting
Adding class Solaris_NFSShareSetting
Adding class Solaris_ShareService
Adding class Solaris_MountService
Adding class Solaris_NFSMount
Adding class Solaris_NFSShareSecurityModes
Adding class Solaris_NFSShareDefSecurityMode
Adding class Solaris_HostedShare
Adding class Solaris_PersistentShareConfiguration
Adding class Solaris_PersistentShareForSystem
Adding class Solaris_NFSShareEntry
Adding class Solaris_SharedElement
Adding class Solaris_NFSExport
Adding class Solaris_SharedFileSystem
Compilation succeeded.
Adding instance of solaris_providerpath
Adding instance of solaris_providerpath
Adding class Solaris_VMStateDatabase
Adding class Solaris_VMSoftPartition
Adding class Solaris_VMExtent
Adding class Solaris_VMStripe
Adding class Solaris_VMConcat
Adding class Solaris_VMMirror
Adding class Solaris_VMRaid5
Adding class Solaris_VMTrans
Adding class Solaris_VMHotSparePool
Adding class Solaris_VMDiskSet
Adding class Solaris_VMStorageVolume
Adding class Solaris_VMConcatComponent
Adding class Solaris_VMDriveInDiskSet
Adding class Solaris_VMExtentBasedOn
Adding class Solaris_VMSoftPartComponent
Adding class Solaris_VMExtentInDiskSet
Adding class Solaris_VMHostInDiskSet
Adding class Solaris_VMHotSpareInUse
Adding class Solaris_VMHotSpares
Adding class Solaris_VMMirrorSubmirrors
Adding class Solaris_VMRaid5Component
Adding class Solaris_VMStatistics
Adding class Solaris_VMStripeComponent
Adding class Solaris_VMTransLog
Adding class Solaris_VMTransMaster
Adding class Solaris_VMUsesHotSparePool
Adding class Solaris_VMVolumeBasedOn
Adding class Solaris_DiskIOPerformanceMonitor
Compilation succeeded.
Adding instance of solaris_providerpath
Adding class Solaris_ActiveUser
Adding class Solaris_ActiveProject
Adding class Solaris_ProcessStatisticalInformation
Adding class Solaris_UserProcessAggregateStatisticalInformation
Adding class Solaris_ProjectProcessAggregateStatisticalInformation
Adding class Solaris_ProcessStatistics
Adding class Solaris_ActiveUserProcessAggregateStatistics
Adding class Solaris_ActiveProjectProcessAggregateStatistics
Compilation succeeded.
Registration setup: 8/8 (Executing SUNWpmgr_reg.sh)
Registering components: 64/64 (Registering PatchMgrCli.jar)                 er)
Solaris Management Console server is ready.For interest, the nmap result is:
toby@deepthought ~ $ nmap -v 192.168.1.122
Starting Nmap 4.01 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2006-08-29 20:39 EDT
DNS resolution of 1 IPs took 0.23s. Mode: Async [#: 2, OK: 0, NX: 1, DR: 0, SF: 0, TR: 1, CN: 0]
Initiating Connect() Scan against 192.168.1.122 [1672 ports] at 20:39
The Connect() Scan took 44.49s to scan 1672 total ports.
Host 192.168.1.122 appears to be up ... good.
Interesting ports on 192.168.1.122:
(The 1662 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
PORT     STATE SERVICE
21/tcp   open  ftp
22/tcp   open  ssh
23/tcp   open  telnet
79/tcp   open  finger
111/tcp  open  rpcbind
513/tcp  open  login
514/tcp  open  shell
898/tcp  open  sun-manageconsole
4045/tcp open  lockd
7100/tcp open  font-service
Nmap finished: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 44.874 seconds(port 7100 is actually a non-standard VNC server which was carried over from the global zone)
Of course, this is immediately before running Solaris Security Toolkit (jass) to apply a secure profile.
Does it matter that this SMC startup can be triggered so easily remotely?

Answer 1

It just struck me odd that simply port-scanning the
machine could produce this behaviour, and I wonder if
it might be a security issue.Probably not directly. Sun has distributed several items in the past that launch via inetd connections (calendar manager and font server were two common ones). Just because it launches doesn't mean it's a security problem. The application itself may require authentication after running.
Of course the resources required by the process may be non-trivial, and the application may have security issues, but the fact that it launches isn't a direct indication of a problem.
Darren